


To Touch The Skin Of Other Men

by apollos



Series: all the times in-between [13]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Coda, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22275178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Sometimes Dennis tries. Sometimes Mac pushes back. Coda for 9x05, "Mac Day."
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Series: all the times in-between [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1478432
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	To Touch The Skin Of Other Men

Mac Day is over, not that it makes a difference. After suffering through a Frank Day full of humiliation, Mac and Dennis arrive back at their apartment. Dennis takes the shower first, leaving Mac to sit on a towel on their floor as to contain the sewage dripping off his body. He methodically undresses, piling his clothes beside him, until he is naked and sitting on top of his own boxers. The apartment reeks. Dennis had gotten off easy, just the ingredients for a red velvet cake mixed in his hair, but Mac lets him claim the shower because Mac deserves to sit in literal rotting fetid human waste and refuse and think about nothing but the wrath of God.

Dennis emerges from the bathroom, towel around his waist. "All yours," he says. "I was quick, so, you know. Still some hot water left."

"Thank you," Mac intones. He doesn't move, just sits cross-legged on the floor with his back straight.

"Uh, Mac?" Dennis says, crossing his arms over his bare, wet chest. "You gotta shower, buddy. You reek."

"I know," Mac says.

"Don't do this, man." Dennis shifts his weight, scratches the back of his calf with his foot. "Don't go all—quiet on me, like a choir boy or some shit. Just—take a shower, and we'll talk afterwards, okay?"

Mac unfolds his body and strides to the bathroom, feeling Dennis's eyes on him the whole time.

After the shower Mac hurries to his room to dress, pulling on sweatpants and a very old, very comfortable t-shirt from a bar that no longer exists. Dennis wants to talk, but Mac waits for Dennis to come to him, to mean his words. If he's lucky, Dennis has forgotten. If he's lucky. he can slide under his bed and sleep for a while (they've been up for forty-eight hours straight at this point, and they've drank and they've smoked and the world seems a little hazy around the edges.) But Mac is not a lucky man and Dennis has not forgotten.

He walks into Mac's room like he owns to place, which to be fair, he does: he pays the rent and he pays for Mac and he owns both in equal measure, maybe one a little more. "Look, it sucks that Country Mac died," Dennis begins. His hair is ruffled from the shower, sticking up. One curl in particular springs at a funny angle over his right ear. Mac thinks about swiping the pad of his thumb with his tongue and smoothing it down. The skin there itches with the desire to do it, his tongue flipping in his mouth.

"Yeah," Mac agrees. "Hey, look, I was thinking, I really just want to sleep, bro—"

"You'll sleep." Dennis sits on the bed. They face the wall, the crucifixes hanging over them. "I just—I thought about it, and, you know, Mac Day kind of sucked. I mean, it always kind of sucks, right? But this one _really_ sucked."

"I know."

"You want me to make it better?" A hand on Mac's thigh.

Mac swats it off. "Mac Day is over, Dennis," he says. "You can wait for Dennis Day."

"A whole year?" Dennis bates his eyelashes at Mac. Nausea curls in his stomach. This is the Dennis of the tapes, not the Dennis of reality.

"A whole year. Get out of my room."

Dennis leaves, lets Mac stew. Dennis has been awake for forty-eight hours, too, but that's not unusual for him. He goes to the kitchen and puts on a pot of coffee. Frank Day marks the end of their days for their calendar. A month earlier, on Dennis Day, Dennis had largely commanded everybody to worship him, but he found it a little hollow at the end. It's not the same if it's not real. He made them tie slipknots just to fuck with them. He kissed the rope burn on the pads of Mac's fingers, and when they slid over his cock, he shivered at the scrape.

He has to give it to Mac: Mac Day felt real, if only because Mac did all the same shit he would usually do, just magnified and with an audience. The audience is a key point, Dennis thinks, everybody watching Mac perform his rituals and his methods of denial. Mac always has an audience in his mind, God watching everything he does. Mac believes himself to be that important in the eye of God; or, more likely, Mac's looked for a scapegoat and found one.

Dennis pours himself a cup of coffee—good coffee, expensive grounds. He and Mac shop at the organic grocery store. Once every two weeks. Mac complains about the place the entire time but lets Dennis buy him the fancy protein supplements that cost twenty dollars a pop, concedes to Dennis's argument that healthy food leads to more muscle gain. This coffee comes from there and it tastes good, refined. Dennis pads to the couch and sits.

Reflects. Dennis does a lot of reflection. Maintaining peak mental health is as important as peak physical health, so in these quiet moments—with no audience, no God, no Mac—Dennis thinks about his actions and how he could have executed them better and to what end that would have accomplished. The thing about the Days is that they are sort of sacred, they all agree they're sort of sacred, and they really shouldn't have brought an outsider into the mix. It's not that Country Mac wasn't awesome—he was—or that he died—shit happens—but that it did ruin Mac's Day. They'll never hear the end of it. Mac might make an argument for a double Day next year. Then again, Mac could've kept it low-key, like Dennis and Dee keep their Days. He could have just lectured at them about the homosexuality, that's a given, and then he could have taken them to watch a wrestling match. Sometimes Mac takes them out for a big dinner at Hooters or The WingHouse to cap it all off, a pathetic and desperate attempt to show how straight he is, how much he loves the girls there. The food sucks. Dennis hates those years.

What Dennis could have done differently this year: he should have been more supportive. He tried, really, in the beginning, with the bridge and whatnot. He'd been blinded by Country Mac, afterwards, and something about Country Mac's presence just served to amplify regular Mac's flaws. Should Dennis buy Mac a motorcycle? Would he like that? A helmet, too, of course. Dennis can't stomach the idea of Mac riding a motorcycle without a helmet, drunk, swerving in and out of cars like that. Death at a moment's notice. Mac wouldn't do that to Dennis. The motorcycle is not a good idea. A nice new leather jacket, one that has the smell and everything, from the nice leather store, costing hundreds of dollars, shuffled onto Frank's credit card—that's a good idea. A pair of boots, too, maybe.

Well, Dennis concludes. There were a few slight flaws with the day, but it landed on Country Mac's head for the most part, and now Country Mac is dead. Well and fine. Dennis knew the guy for less than twenty-four hours, and besides a few stories here and there, Mac never talked about him much. (Dennis is starting to think it might have something to do with Country Mac's sexual orientation.)

The other thing about Mac Day: Dennis lets Mac believe that he's not gay, not in love with Dennis. Dennis tries not to push it, to test the boundaries, like he does every other day. He leaves Mac alone, waits to see if Mac initiates. Mac never initiates. And that doesn't disappoint Dennis at the end of the day, no, not at all.


End file.
